1. Field of the Invention
Aspects of the present invention relate generally to capturing and storing the experience of a live event and reproducing that experience at a later date.
2. Description of Related Art
Currently, there exists no system that allows users to not only react to live multimedia content in real-time, but to have those reactions shared with the other users who are “participating” in the same live event—true, real-time interaction. The ability to share the experience of a live event with others, who may or may not be in the same physical space as any other user, greatly enhances both the users' and the broadcaster's experiences; the interactivity transforms the act of watching multimedia content from passive consumption to active participation. In addition, the information culled from the real-time reactions of the participating audience, when analyzed in the aggregate, can help to monetize and organize the associated multimedia content, and determine at what points in time within the multimedia stream the content is the most interesting and compelling.
Furthermore, there currently exists no mechanism by which the total experience of watching a live event, as interpreted and recorded by those participating in its consumption, can be reproduced at will and experienced in its entirety by users who did not participate in the original event.
So, while methods currently exist for streaming live multimedia content, they are inherently limited by the fact that they cannot take advantage of, in real-time, the audience's reaction and participation level. Thus, it is desirable to provide a system by which broadcasters and consumers of multimedia content can interact, in real-time, with the content and each other, and can see the reactions of the other users. It is also desirable to leverage the information gleaned by the reaction data provided by the users so as to enable discovery, in real-time, of content that users may find interesting; the aggregated information can also help advertisers and users determine the most compelling content within a particular stream. It is further desirable to enable the reproduction, at a later date, of the original multimedia stream together with the associated feedback data; such a facility enables a user to experience the event as if it were occurring live.